The present invention relates generally to cordless telephone networks for covering an area which is divided into relatively small zones, or microcells, and more specifically to a technique for polling the cordless telephones of such systems to elicit a zone registration response therefrom.
With cellular cordless or mobile telephone networks, each cordless or mobile station is polled at intervals from each cell site to return a response indicating the identity of the zone in which the station is located. In order to avoid a collision between polling signals from the cell sites, poll timing information is stored in a local switching system, which directs all base units at the cell sites to send respective polling signals at mutually exclusive times. This type of networks has met with wide reception in business environments as it can be easily adapted for changes in corporate organization of floor space. With this type of application, the area covered by the network is partitioned into small zones, or microcells with a diameter of as small as several tens of meters.
However, difficulty arises in precisely setting the poll timing at a single control point such that it is always optimal for changing topologies of business environment.